June 6, 2020Ellen Dostal – Broadway World “May you live in interesting times,” has taken on new meaning in 2020 amid the current world health crisis. No one could have imagined a scenario like this where theater doors would be forced to close indefinitely. And yet, they have. But you can’t dampen the heart of an artistRead More

March 3, 2020Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw In a Rorschach test, an individual is presented with a series of abstract images and asked what they see. Their answers are used by the administering psychiatrist or psychologist to gain insight into that person’s state of mind. Open Fist Theater Company’s current production is titled Rorschach Fest. Presented asRead More

February 27, 2020Erin Conley – On Stage & Screen It all begins with a note on a car and a case of mistaken identity. Found, a musical based on the books and magazines of the same name by Davy Rothbart, opened this past weekend in its west coast premiere at IAMA Theatre Company in Los Angeles. ReadRead More

February 22, 2020Jonas Schwartz – Broadway World After two successful runs in Los Angeles in 2012 and 2014 at the Pantages, that smut-mouthed, but endearing musical comedy The Book Of Mormon has squatted downtown at the Ahmanson, and third time around, it has lost none of its luster, or its smut. Read more… Now running through MarchRead More

February 22, 2020Rob Stevens – Haines His Way A middle-aged couple wake up one morning naked in bed. The woman gently removes his hand from her breast, dons a handy silk robe and is off to the kitchen to make coffee. The man soon follows. Read more… Now running through March 15

February 19, 2020Lovell Estell III — Stage Raw Hamlet The Rock Musical has had a few iterations since it debuted in 1973 with the title Kronberg 1582. It was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where it was part of a larger radio program. In 1976, it ran on Broadway for seven shows as Rockabye Hamlet, andRead More

February 19, 2020Terry Morgan - Stage Raw Poverty and homelessness and what to do about them are hardly new matters of concern. King Lear berates his newly-found conscience thus: “Poor naked wretches…how shall your houseless heads and unfed sides…defend you from seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en too little care of this!” Read more… MargaretRead More

Archive for February 2017 – Page 2

Jonny Donahoe, a wonderful storyteller, is so personal and persuasive that one assumes, or at least I did, that the solo show he performs at the Edye at the Broad is an autobiographical play. But it isn’t. Every Brilliant Thing was initially written by Duncan Macmillan….Read more…

Two teenagers drag two freshly dead corpses into a storage unit. The moment they leave, the corpses sit up and start talking to each other, and it would be like nothing ever happened if not for the gaping bullet wounds in both of their chests. Read more…

I have never been much of a video game player. Truthfully I haven’t played one since the very early versions of Pong and PacMan started replacing pin ball machines in bars to give customers something to do while drinking. So I was a bit leery about seeing the new musical Claudio Quest….

Cathy stands center stage, in the spotlight, singing at yet another audition. That is, until Jamie wordlessly steps in front of her and sits on a stool to begin reading from his novel. Cathy, her spotlight now literally and figuratively occupied by her more successful husband, silently retreats, defeated once again. Read more…

August Wilson’s King Hedley II takes place in the 1980s when Reaganomics, and the notion that wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor, was the hypothetical order of the day. The reality, of course, is that no such trickling took place; the poor, black and white, grew poorer than ever, a circumstance we see in the struggle of Wilson’s title character to earn a living for himself and his family, and to garner, against odds, some measure of self-respect. Read more…

Neal Weaver – Stage Raw

This play by the late August Wilson is part of his 10-play series about the black experience in each of the decades of the 20th century. This one is set in the 1980s. The title character, King Hedley II (Esau Pritchett), is a proud but thwarted black man, whose face is bisected by a livid scar, the result of a razor attack. Read more…

It’s not helpful to dwell on the generation gap between the young and the old, particularly in the world of LGBTQ folks. The young possess the great currency of youth — beauty, brashness, opportunity. By contrast, if capitalist culture markets to Queers at all, the older folks are shunted to the side…..Read more…

We don’t usually think of the Japanese as being on the side of the angels during the Holocaust. This play reveals how, when the Nazis began rounding up the Jews in Lithuania, the Japanese ambassador signed exit visas for 6,000 of them and sent them to Kobe, Japan to form a settlement. Read more…

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fellowship in various ways: as companionship, as a community of interest or experience, as a company of equals or friends, among others. These definitions serve as prologue to Julie Marie Myatt’s immersive stage play, fellowship: a play for volunteers………Read more…

If one has the audacity to take on the leviathan of American literature, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, one had best be able to do justice to the source material and also have something new to bring to it. Thankfully, the Lookingglass Theatre Company’s production (which mysteriously removes the hyphen from the title) fulfills these requirements Read more…

Rob Stevens – Haines His Way

Has there ever been a work of classic literature, something that was on the reading list at your high school or college? Something you meant to read, maybe even started to read, but gave up soon into it? Read more…

Hoyt Hilsman - Huffington Post

Founded in 1988 in Chicago by a group of Northwestern graduates, the Lookingglass Theatre is known for its innovative ensemble theater productions. In its adaptation of Herman Melville’s sprawling novel, Moby Dick, the company has tackled the monumental challenge of translating an epic work into a couple of hours of stage time. Read more…

I have always been fond of Irish playwrights from Oscar Wilde’s wicked wit to George Bernard Shaw’s political take on the battle of the sexes. It’s the whimsical Irish with their gentle and/or raucous tales of opposites attracting and striking romantic sparks that resonate most with me. Read more…

Melinda Schupmann – Arts In LA

Christian O’Reilly’s delightful Irish play about two lonely souls of a certain age is both witty and poignant. From the first moments when bachelor Dan (Mark Bramhall) speaks to the audience as storyteller, we are engaged in a tale that is deceptively simple yet thoroughly affecting. Read more…

Torrance Theatre Company’s latest offering is another charmer from Canadian playwright Norm Foster. “The Great Kooshog Lake Hollis McCauley Fishing Derby” shows the city dweller in all of us that small-town folk have all the wisdom we could hope for but perhaps none of petty stresses we cling to. Read more...